LabGuy's World:
Cartrivision ~ The First ALL American Home VCR!Newest Addition 03.06.08

Cartrivision ~ The First ALL American Home VCR

. The year
was 1972. This is the first VCR made in the U.S.A. for consumers. The product
flopped horribly ~ of course. Shown in the photos above, is a beautiful
example of an end table model. These were large machines and had they had
to blend in with the living room decor. The Cartrivision VCR was typically
intended to be built into a console style 25" color TV, a popular screen
size at that time. Sets like that were produced by Sears, Montgomery Wards,
Curtis Mathes, just to name a few. The third photo is of the interior front
of the mechanism. Very few
Cartrivision VCRs were sold new. Thousands were sold surplus through outlets
like Olsen Electroncis or private clubs. Initially they were sold here
in the San Jose / south bay area (Silicon Valley, where else?). Steve Wozniak
had one, as well as the fellows who founded Newtek, makers of the Video
Toaster! I wonder if they still have their Cartrivision VCRs? (Someone
please hook us all up!)

Cartrivision Rear Connector Panel

. The photo
above is of the connector bay on the rear of the end table model. There
is a screwdriver access "color hold" control pot, camera and microphone
inputs plus left and right audio out. The Cartrivision VCR could play stereo
audio from prerecorded cassettes, but only recorded audio in mono. More
precisely, it records one input channel onto both audio tracks. In the
case of bi-lingual programming, a clunky shorting plug was put into either
the right or left audio output to mute the audio from that channel. These
audio output jacks work like earphone jacks, inserting the plug cuts of
the audio that went to an internal RF converter. The RF unit was NOT standard
equipment. Being the first (and only) version of the VCR, there were some
obvious (to us today) ergonomic issues with this product. Of course, this
is only a detail that in no way detracts from the genius of this system!
It was the first of a kind. Minor issues, like these, were inevitable.

"Ergonomics" or "Human Engineering" Disaster Zone!

. The term,
"user friendly" is never used in the same sentence as the word Cartrivision.
(Except here!) To my trained eye, this product has a lot of "Ampex" in
it. Note that to go into fast forward, you press down the FF button and
turn the function selector knob to the rewind position. Kind of like going
into record mode. (Press & hold record button, turn selector to play)
This takes two hands and even then is cumbersome to say the least. Notice
that the positioning of the controls is near the height of most people's
ankles! Behind the smoked cover, on the left, are two additional mode switches
and the mechanical sleep timer. The logic of these switches is bewildering
in its (unnecessary) complexity. Of course, I say this with a contemporary
attitude. Keep in mind, that there were no microprocessors back then! To
be fair, the Cartrivision VCR does contain some (primitive) integrated
circuits. But, none of those were used in the mode control logic. All control
logic in the VCR was by means of mechanical switches and relays, mostly.
Some transistorized time delay circuits are used, but do not constitute
digital logic as we understand it today. The rest of the electronics can
be described as "discrete transistorized circuitry". Easy as heck to repair,
expensive and labor intensive to assemble. This is what is most responsible
for the $1,600 selling price in 1972 dollars! Imagine what a Pentium (R)
processor would cost if each and every transistor had to be soldered in
by hand! Can you say, "Billions and billions of dollars?" The Ampex
small format VTRs also had a less than ideal user interface and I believe
this method was carried forward in the design of these VCRs. They required
the operator to throw multiple levers to select electronic modes separately
from the deck functions levers. Which is also a very cumbersome two handed
exercise in coordination. Operations may have seemed logical to the engineers,
but this is not what the typical consumer could, or can, deal with. It
should come as no surprise that Cartrivision was essentially started by
a group of maverick Ampex engineers and managers. After having
said all that, I want to be clear that I am not knocking any Ampex or Cartrivision
products or engineers. I admire both companies and their people a great
deal. The point is that when engineers are designing a bleeding edge product,
the human factors may not be given the highest priority. These things
were too big, too clunky and far too expensive. This product was produced
through a subsidiary of Avco / Embassy entertainment called Cartridge Television,
Incorporated. The advantage of this was the huge collections of films already
owned by Avco. It was a logical idea. My Friend, Luke Perry, tells the
story of Cartridge Television much better than I can, so to learn more
about the company itself, visit Luke's web page: [Cartrivision:
A unique way of looking at things]. Another
excellent source of information, taken from the consumer's point of view,
is at the [CED
Magic Web site]. CED Magic is a site devoted to the RCA Selectavision
Capacitive Video Disc players. CED Magic also covers many many obsolete
video products. Both sites are great reading!.

Cartrivision Stock Certificate

. The recording
process is what is called skip field. The machine records every third field
of video and plays it back three times. This gives an effective 10 frames
per second at only 240 scan lines! A primitive video compressor! But, it
was full COLOR!
What a wonderful product! I would like to think that if they had simply
put a transparent cover on the front of the unit, leaving those marvelously
Rube Goldberg insides visible, this format would still be alive today.
Naaaaa! The camcorder would be too huge! When the machine is running, the
10 inch diameter head wheel, and the entire circuit board containing the
record / playback head(s) electronics, spins around 10 times a second!
What a wonderfully goofy thing to see. Even a blank tape can be entertaining
with one of these filling your living room! Shown in the first photo above
is the tape drive mechanism. A second component (shown farther down this
page), containing most of the electronics nick named the "fish tank", is
almost as large as the tape drive mechanism itself! The VCR shown above,
is one that was donated to LabGuy's world about a year ago. That particular
deck will require a lot more work to restore it, than the latest decks
I just obtained just last month..

An Emerson TV / VCR Console Model

. The VCRs
were so big, they were usually bundled in the same cabinet with a 25 inch
color TV like the Emerson monster shown above! They were sold through major
department stores like Montgomery Wards and Sears. The machines were sold
on the third floor in the TV department while the tapes were sold on the
first floor in the records and 8 track department! The sales people on
these floors were unaware of this most of the time! The system sold for
over $1600 back then. No sale! That's equivalent ot about $3300 in today's
dollars. Cartridge rental was where the company planned on making the big
bucks. At least they predicted that market correctly! The rental cassettes
could be distinguished easily from the blank tapes. The rental tapes were
red and the blank recordable tapes were black with yellow labels. The rental
cassettes also could not be rewound in the home deck. They had to be rewound
on a special machine at the video store! (See below) This guaranteed that
the consumer could only watch the movie once per rental! I'm glad JVC didn't
do that to VHS! Betamax would have taken over, eh? A small
black and white camera was available for home recording. The camera was
manufactured by Eumig of Austria. To this
day, this company is studied in business schools as the prime of example
of "how not to do it"! Cartridge Television Incorporated came and went
in less than three years! One other extenuating factor that led to the
downfall of Cartrivision was that almost all of the first run cassettes
went bad from humidity in the warehouse! That was simple bad luck. Their legacy
is that they left behind literally thousands of brand new unsold VCRs and
tens of thousands of movie cartridges. The video cameras were a standard
item in hundreds of amateur television shacks as well. Both the Cartrivision
VCRs and cameras still turn up on the surplus market in respectable quantities
to this very day.New Addition! 03.06.08

Cartrivision rental tape (red cartridge) rewinder

. The red
Cartrivision cassettes were for rental only. The consumer could not rewind
the red cassettes in the home machine. To rewind these, they were returned
to the rental center and were then rewound on a special machine, shown
above. This is packaged in quite an industrial, leatherette covered, steel
case. This machine rewound the cassette to the proper tension and cleaned
the surface of the tape prior to the next rental. It is claimed that
the machine logged the number of times the tape was rewound, though, I
am not sure how this was done. Automatically or with a paper based (human
powered) tracking system? The text of the instructions shown on the flip
up cover reads as follows:.1. Open bucket and insert cartridge.2. Close bucket fully.3. Move lever to down position and hold for one (1)
second and then release. 4. Cartridge will rewind and unit will automatically
shut off.5. Open bucket and remove cartridge.NOTE: When cleaning tape is expended, cover will automatically
open..

Internal view of the rental tape rewinder

. The mechanism
of the rewinder appears to have been able to fast forward the tape to the
end before rewinding and cleaning it. The two photos above let us clearly
see the insides of the rewinder machine. Note the two spools that look
like typewriter ribbons at the top of the first photo. These contain a
cloth (I think) cleaning tape that touches the surface of the video tape
during rewind. The large motor performs rewind, while the smaller motor,
to the right of the second photo, performs the fast forward drive.
New Addition 02.07.28

. I have
this one special tape and it's a double collector's item! It's still
in the original cellophane wrapper with the original price tag on it. This
tape sold for: $6. 50! (around 1972) It's a 24 minute episode of: Gadabout
Gaddis, the Flying Fisherman, entitled: "Bayhorse Trout". (Copyright 1965
G.G. Productions, Inc. ).

. My Dad
and I used to watch his show every Sunday afternoon before I was in high
school, sometime in the late 1960's. Gadabout would fly his private Cessna
airplane, hither and yon, just to go fishing! Personally, I'm not very
enthusiastic about fishing. So, I was sure glad that Dad didn't own a small
plane! For me today, this tape has triple collector's value, it's a vintage
video collectors' item, it's a Gadabout Gaddis collectors' item and it's
a link to my own heritage! Every time I look at it, I
remember my Dad....